A new rule the Trump administration published earlier this month is finally addressing the flood of foreign students at U.S. universities plagued by anti-American ideology. Half a million of these students are illegal aliens, while more than a million additional college students are here on student visas, overwhelmingly from non-Western countries having political systems unlike or opposed to ours.
Trump has just ended this racket. Under a new rule issued by Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, most new F-1 students will receive visas that expire after a fixed period of time, usually four years. This puts healthy pressure on universities and students to reach the finish line as scheduled, rather than dawdle indefinitely in the academic cocoon. The average length of time in graduate studies has ballooned to more than seven years for a Ph.D., which harmfully causes students to delay having families and finding employment.
For half a century foreigners could enter graduate programs and take many years, far more than four, to complete their doctoral programs while remaining in the U.S. without any deadline to leave. The F-1 visa program has been allowing foreigners to remain on visas here for the “duration of their status” at their university, with no time limit.
The rule allows students to ask for an extension if they are unable to complete their degrees in the allotted time period, but the application process will run through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. “This transitions oversight from university staff back to federal authorities and subjects applicants to biometric vetting, background checks, and fraud screenings,” the Department of Homeland Security noted.
Trump is also cutting back on the period in which foreigners may linger in the U.S. after completing their programs, reducing it from 60 to 30 days. International students who line up jobs here can seek other visa programs, but most should be returning to their homelands.
Trump’s regulatory changes also restrict transfers by foreigners from one university to another while here. Restrictions are being imposed on foreigners switching academic programs within their schools, too. “An F-1 student at any level below the graduate degree level may not change programs or educational objectives, i.e. majors or educational levels, within the first academic year of a program of study, unless an exception is authorized,” the rule states. The new rule takes effect on Sept. 15 of this year.
Until recently many states, including Republican-controlled Texas, went as far as allowing illegal aliens to benefit from low in-state tuition rates while Americans from out of state were forced to pay much higher rates. The unfair difference over four years can approach $100,000 per student.
In July 2023 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled against a challenge to how a public Texas university charged only in-state tuition to illegal aliens, while charging much higher out-of-state tuition to American citizens. But this month the same court upheld by a 2-1 vote a settlement with the Trump administration whereby Texas agreed to stop enrolling illegal aliens at preferential tuition rates.
Many of the international graduate students are receiving salaries or other compensation from American taxpayers, in the form of direct government subsidies at public universities and federal grants at private ones. Graduate programs are generally funded by universities and government grants, so it is fair to question why there are any foreigners in these positions.
Moreover, academic teaching positions are particularly scarce, such that academic jobs are available for only a small percentage of those who obtain doctorates. On the undergraduate level, only 4.2 percent of applicants to Harvard College were admitted in its Class of 2029, which is the most recent data available — and every admission of a foreigner takes a spot away from an American applicant.
Even before the new rule takes effect, universities are complaining about a decline in international students in graduate programs, which they attribute to Trump’s occasional travel bans and freezing of some federal grants. The drop in K-12 enrollment (which is mostly due to the declining birth rate) means there will be fewer American students in the pipeline for universities in the future.
But the problem isn’t travel bans or Trump’s new rule ending decade-long stints in college. Universities have only themselves to blame if there is a shortage of American students. Left-wing political ideology dominant at universities leans strongly against child-rearing. If more students are wanted for the future, then there should be more encouragement now by academia for Americans to have and raise their children.
